To fully understand the gravity of what we’re about to discuss, let’s first take a look at what “healthcare cost” actually refers to, since this term can take on many different meanings. Politicians talk about costs in regard to government spending on health care, whereas hospital administrators and physicians are usually referring to costs of production and the money they spend on resources needed to care for patients. Employers may refer to “healthcare costs” in terms of insurance, or the amount they spend on their employees’ health care insurance plans. Nevertheless, everybody complains of out-of-pocket costs, co-pays, medications and whatever is spent over and above the portion that is covered by insurance.
Each year we grow more financially responsible for our own individual healthcare costs. Consumers omit the “middleman” when they utilize direct access to physical therapy; it saves the consumer time, money and allows them to maintain more control of where their money goes.
Direct access provides benefits to consumers with all types of pain and musculoskeletal conditions; for argument’s sake I am going to focus on the condition of lower back pain, which clocks in at more than 3 million US cases per year.
The right physical therapy, within 14 days of the onset of pain, minimizes the average total cost of care by half each year. For example, a typical low back pain patient who waits to receive physical therapy is likely to spend over $6,000 annually, whereas a patient who schedules PT treatment immediately (and adheres to their plan of care) will spend less than $3,000 – that’s more than 50% OFF!
The Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) released a study in 2016 pertaining to patients with lower back pain, suggesting that seeing a physical therapist as the first point of care (via direct access) can reduce the need for potentially costly services and reduce consumers’ medical spend across all settings.
- “Patients with lower back pain who saw a physical therapist first had significantly lower probability of having an Emergency Department visit, lower imaging rates, and lower probability of an opioid prescription compared to patients who saw another provider first”
- “Low back pain (LBP) is the most common type of pain experienced in the United States, with 25% of the US population reporting at least one full day of LBP within the last 3 months.”
- “LBP is also the number one contributor to years lived with disability and the number three contributor to disability adjusted life years (DALYs) in the US.”
- “Back pain is estimated to cost the United States up to $90.6 billion in direct costs and $19.8 billion in indirect costs; the indirect costs are due to missed days of work, disability, and low productivity. The health care costs for LBP continue to grow at a pace greater than non-LBP expenditures.”
As physical therapists are trained to determine whether an MRI or x-ray can benefit a patient, there are an increasing number of patients choosing physical therapy first, and for good reason. The first being that all of this imaging work costs quite a bit of money, adding roughly $2,500 to $4,800 to the patient’s bills over the course of the year. In addition to this, research shows that patients who start their course of care with physical therapy return to work 2 to 4 times sooner than those choosing a surgical option. This route of care has also shown more likely to prevent further injuries in the future.
#THINKPTFIRST 